Facebook’s 2FA posting irrelevant stuff on user’s timeline

Things aren’t exactly smooth sailing at Facebook at the moment with the company now accused of spamming the very numbers users submitted for 2-factor authentication to inundate them with notifications. That is not all as replies made to such notifications are getting posted to the user’s Facebook profile automatically.

Security experts too have lambasted Facebook for misusing a feature as important as 2-factor authentication. In fact, it also is extremely rare of any responsible company to turn 2FA into a marketing tool even though such steps are likely to be more counterproductive than yielding a more positive response.

The mess seems to run even deeper as Facebook is also being accused of using the phone number to suggest new friends to the user. The company is using the phone number to search if the same is in the contact list of someone else. If a match is found, the person is duly added to the ‘People you may know’ list.

Many users are also complaining they are getting to see things on their news feed that they’d never like to see. However, this seems to be an issue with the algorithm that powers the news feed and is unrelated to the way the company is dealing with numbers provided for 2FA. The spam messages and notifications are reported to have been received even by those who haven’t authorized Facebook to text them.

Facebook, on its part, has stated they are investigating the issue of user’s getting text notification even if they have opted out of it. The company, however, is maintaining a stoic silence over the issue of auto-posting of replies, which has led many to believe it could be intentional after all and not caused by a bug. It also said it is exploring other options for 2FA in case a user isn’t inclined to provide their phone numbers.

The world’s largest social networking site has been facing a lot of flak over the content shown in the news feed. From being grossly inappropriate to being open to manipulation by other nation states, Facebook has been through rough times off late. That is not all as earlier it has even been reported to have lost its appeal among the teens and young adults who seem to prefer rival platform Snapchat.